Exopolitics
is a term increasingly used by many UFO researchers and activists as a
consequence of the number of websites, books and conferences that have taken
this distinctive approach to the UFO phenomenon and the extraterrestrial
hypothesis (ETH) that UFOs are interplanetary in origin. By September 25, 2005
there have been three international conferences convened on exopolitics; two
books written about exopolitics; and the establishment of a non-government
organization dedicated to exopolitics.1

This article is aimed at
clarifying the concept of exopolitics and explaining its history in terms of
the some early pioneers who began to focus on the political aspects of the UFO
phenomenon and the ETH. This has culminated in the term ‘exopolitics’ coming
into widespread use. This will help identify some of the leading ideas in the
exopolitics field and the challenges ahead as exopolitics is increasingly used
with multiple meanings and different evidentiary sources.

I begin
by defining exopolitics, its foundations and pioneers in the field, as a
distinct political approach to the UFO phenomenon and the ETH. A clear
definition enables one to identify who among the early UFO researchers first
began pursuing exopolitical issues. I propose the following to be used as a
standard definition for exopolitics:

“Exopolitics is the study of the key
political actors, institutions and processes associated with the UFO phenomenon
and the extraterrestrial hypothesis.”

This
makes it possible to distinguish between the term ‘exopolitics’ and the concept
of exopolitics. While the term ‘exopolitics’ is relatively new, being coined in
2000, and coming into widespread usage in 2003/2004; the concept of exopolitics
has been implicit in terms such as the “Flying Saucer Conspiracy”, “UFO Cover
Up”, “Cosmic Watergate”, etc., that have been a standard part of UFO literature
for over five decades .

Exopolitics
is distinct to UFO research which is focused on the empirical analysis of UFOs
and avoids inquiries into the ETH until sufficient empirical evidence on UFO
sightings has been amassed to indubitably substantiate the ETH.

Dr Allen Hynek
defined the scientific study of UFOs as follows:

We can define the UFO simply as the reported perception of
an object or light seen in the sky or upon the land the appearance, trajectory,
and general dynamic and luminescent behavior of which do not suggest a logical,
conventional explanation and which is not only mystifying to the original
percipients but remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available
evidence by person who are technically capable of making a common sense
identification, if one is possible.2

The ETH
was first officially proposed as the most valid explanation for UFO/Flying
Saucer sightings by a classified study initiated by the U.S. Air Force in 1948.
The classified study of approximately 300 cases produced an ‘Estimate of the
Situation’ in September 1948, whose conclusion supported the ETH.

The study and
its remarkable conclusion was moved all the way up the Air Force hierarchy to
the desk of the Chief of Staff, General Hoyt Vandenberg who rejected it and
made clear that acceptance of the ETH was not an acceptable conclusion for
reasons related to national security concerns.3

The rejection of the
initial Estimate of the Situation and the subsequent destruction of the initial
report found its way to private UFO investigators such as Major Donald Keyhoe
who concluded that it was evidence of a cover up perpetuated at the highest
level of the U.S. military and government. Keyhoe was confidentially told the
following by Capt Edward Ruppelt about Gen Vandenberg’s decision to reject the
original Estimate of the Situation:

“The
general said it would cause a stampede....How could we convince the public the
aliens weren’t hostile when we didn’t know ourselves? … the general ordered the
secret analysis burned. But one copy was held out - Major Dewey Fournet and I
saw it in 1952.”4

Keyhoe’s
subsequent writings and investigation of how the ETH was being deliberately
undermined by military and national security agencies mark the birth of
exopolitics as a distinctive approach to the UFO phenomenon. Keyhoe’s approach
was an exopolitical analysis of the key agencies and individuals behind the UFO
cover-up is a seminal source of exopolitical thought. I will describe exopolitics in terms of four phases that independently continue to the present
day.

Exopolitics
– Phase 1 (1948-)

The Flying Saucer Conspiracy

The
foundations of exopolitics lies in a number of researchers that began seriously
exploring evidence of a high level conspiracy by various government agencies
and military departments to hide the truth about UFOs and the ETH. These
researchers
and their books emerged in the early 1950’s as it became clear that military
departments and national security agencies were not genuine in their efforts to
seriously investigate UFO sightings and evidence supporting the ETH. This
accelerated as news about Vandenberg’s 1948 rejection of the original Estimate
of the Situation was leaked.

A
critical event in this process was the January
1953 Robertson Panel where a
group of scientists chaired by Dr H. P. Robertson and covertly funded by the
CIA, recommended that UFO sightings be debunked due to the potential for these
events to be manipulated by ‘foreign powers’ in a way that would undermine U.S.
national security. The panel recommended an “educational program” to deter the
general public from demanding a serious investigation of UFO sightings:

The "debunking" aim would result in reduction in
public interest in "flying saucers" which today evokes a strong
psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such
as television, motion pictures, and popular articles.… Such a program should
tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their
susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.5

The
Robertson Panel was followed in March 1954 by the secret passage of Joint Army
Navy Air Force Policy (JANAP) 146 that made it an offense for military
servicemen or airline pilots to disclose information about UFO sightings that
had been reported and were subject to an official ‘investigation’.6 Another
critical document was the Brookings Report that was prepared by the
Brookings
Institute for a NASA committee.

The Report described the devastating societal
effects that would emerge from contact with more technologically advanced off
world societies and the political advantages of covering up such information in
the event contact is made:

Anthropological files contain many examples of societies,
sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they had to
associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and
different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by
paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.7

It is
the political cover up of UFO related information verifying the ETH that has
led to the notion of a ‘flying saucer’ or UFO conspiracy.

Authors and books
commenting on the UFO conspiracy come from two complementary but distinct
sources: researchers and ‘experiencers’. Each takes a distinctive approach to
exopolitics based on the ways in which information is gained and evaluated.

The
first approach focuses on political processes surrounding the study of UFOs and
the ETH in what will later be described as the conventional way of defining exopolitics. The second approach comprises the political processes used by
extraterrestrial civilizations themselves which will be described later as the
non-conventional way of defining exopolitics.

The
first approach
is based on the systematic study of the best evidence available
from UFO cases in order to formulate conclusions about the reality of the
phenomenon, and the existence of a UFO cover up. This approach involves seminal
UFO researchers such as Donald Keyhoe who wrote a number of books identifying a
political cover up of the evidence substantiating the existence of the UFO
phenomenon as real, and of evidence supporting the ETH. Keyhoe was an
especially significant researcher, since he began as a skeptic. As a
consequence of his field investigations became convinced of the reality of the
UFO phenomenon and the ETH.

Keyhoe did not use the term ‘exopolitics’ but
choose
instead to use the term ‘flying saucer conspiracy’ to highlight the
hidden political and national security processes at work, keeping from the
general public the truth of the ETH.

Keyhoe’s most important books displaying
his implicit promotion of the exopolitics concept were The Flying Saucer
Conspiracy (1955); Flying Saucers Top Secret (1960); and Aliens
From Space (1973). In these books,
Keyhoe meticulously outlines how the various military departments and national
security agencies are involved in a conspiracy at the highest level to
systematically cover up evidence supporting UFO sightings and the ETH.

Keyhoe
used a wide range of sources for his conclusions. Using the friendships and
networks from his military days, he was able to secure information ‘leaked’ to
him by military officials concerning UFO sightings. He also was able to access
a great amount of data gained from field researchers who investigated sightings
from civilians, military and the aviation industry.

Keyhoe also headed the
National Investigating Committee for Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1959 and
meticulously based his exopolitical or “UFO conspiracy” ideas on the solid
empirical evidence that had been discovered, but was systematically
discredited, debunked or ignored by military departments, national security
agencies and government institutions.

Keyhoe
focused on various ways in which the truth about the UFO reports, especially of
the giant UFO’s (or ‘motherships’) reported in 1953/54 might have led relevant
US authorities to conclude that disclosure would cause widespread panic and
loss of confidence in US military authorities.8

This Keyhoe believes may
be the real reason for the cover up. In his final book, Aliens From Space,
Keyhoe firmly identifies the CIA and U.S. Air Force as the two key institutions
behind the cover up and responsible for discrediting UFO researchers and
witnesses, and for sabotaging initiatives with Congress to have the UFO
phenomenon seriously studied. In particular, Keyhoe described events
surrounding efforts by the National Investigations Committee for Aerial
Phenomenon (NICAP) to initiate congressional hearings in 1961.

NICAP compiled
the best UFO sightings in a confidential report to Congressional
representatives for a planned hearing in the Science and Astronautics Committee
in the House of Representatives.9 The planned congressional hearing was aborted after the
shock resignation of Admiral Hillenkoetter, former Director of the CIA, from
the Board of Governors of NICAP in early 1962. The confidential NICAP report
was eventually published as The UFO Evidence, documenting 700 cases
supporting the reality of the UFO phenomenon.10 Keyhoe was convinced
that Hillenkoetter’s resignation was caused by high level government
intervention to prevent the House committee hearing going ahead.

Keyhoe’s
ideas of a UFO conspiracy became more widespread among UFO researchers after
the publication of the Condon Report in 1969, widely dismissed by UFO
investigators as a whitewash designed to permit the USAF to drop serious
investigations of UFO sightings.11 Termination of
Project Blue Book on the grounds that UFO
sightings had no scientific value or national security concerns was for many,
evidence that a government conspiracy did exist. Its role was to down play the
significance of the UFO phenomenon by dismissing or discrediting evidence as
recommended in the 1953 Robertson Panel.

The
ideas of a national security cover-up and ‘conspiracy’ at the highest level of
government were subsequently taken up by a number of authors who objectively
analyzed UFO sightings and leaked statements reports.

Dolan’s book offers a detailed analysis of how the UFO
phenomenon had been systematically covered up in the U.S. at the highest level
by military and national security agencies. Good’s and Dolan’s analyses offer
insight into the key agencies and departments responsible for covering up
evidence supporting the reality of UFOs and the ETH.

The
second approach
to the UFO conspiracy are individuals who claim to have had
directly experienced contact with extraterrestrials and who offer startling evidence for the ETH
in terms of their extraordinary experiences. These ‘experiencers’ or
‘contactees’ claim that a systematic government/military effort exists to
discredit these ‘contactees’ and corroborating witnesses, and to debunk the
evidence confirming the ETH.

There have been a great number of alleged
‘contactees’ who were very prominent in the 1950s and 1960s but fell into
disfavor as a result vigorous debunking of the evidence and discrediting of
witnesses by the general media, USAF and UFO researchers.

Some of
these early contacteés such as George Adamski, Daniel Fry, Howard Menger, and
George Van Tassel described how government and military agencies kept this
information from getting into the public realm. Much of the evidence for the
veracity of these contacteé reports continues to be strongly contested, but
some researchers find the evidence to be persuasive.

For example, veteran UFO
researcher, Bill Hamilton, examined the cases of a number of “California
contacteés” and argued that there was much merit in these cases which
conventional researchers chose to ignore.12

These early
contacteés related
much information about the politics, philosophy, economics and law practices of
extraterrestrial civilizations among themselves, and with developing worlds
such as earth. The contacteés’ experiences suggested that government agencies
were not willing for information allegedly gained directly from
extraterrestrial civilizations to get into the public arena.

More
recently contacteés such as Billy Meier, Sixto Paz Wells and Carlos Diaz, have
supplied much evidence to substantiate their extraterrestrial contacts.
Extensive photographs and independent witness sightings have been offered to
substantiate these claims, and a number of investigators have concluded
favorably over the authenticity of the contactee’s claims.13
Nevertheless, controversy continues over the authenticity of these cases, and
evidence supplied by contacteés substantiating the ETH and a government
conspiracy to cover up the evidence. These contactees’ reports allegedly give
an idea of the political processes used by extraterrestrials themselves in
their relations with one another and with Earth.

If their experiences are
genuine, it can be concluded that a conspiracy to cover up the political
processes used by extraterrestrials allegedly monitoring and interacting with the
Earth does exist.

Exopolitics:
Phase 2 (1974-)

FOIA, Leaked Documents and Cosmic Watergate

Exopolitical
research went through another stage of development with the passage of the
Freedom of Information Act by the U.S. Congress in 1974 (revised from the
original 1966 version) that focused on documentary evidence of UFOs, and an
associated political process to cover this up.14

The passage of
FOIA led
to emergence of organizations such as the Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS)
with the goal of using the legal process to extract documentary evidence
relevant to UFO sightings and the UFO cover-up. Formed in the late 1970s by
Peter Gersten, together with W.T. Zechel and Brad Sparks,
CAUS achieved most
public prominence for launching lawsuits against the National Security Agency
(NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).15

These lawsuits resulted
in a limited number of documents being released proving conclusively that UFOs
are an issue raising deep national security concerns for these two agencies.

On
the whole, CAUS and other individuals engaged in FOIA research found government
agencies and military departments very evasive and unhelpful in responding to
legitimate FOIA requests. Lawrence Fawcett’s and Barry Greenwood’s book,
Clear
Intent, discusses in detail much of the FOIA activity of CAUS, its
lawsuits, and its success in exposing the political process for covering up
evidence concerning UFOs and the ETH (1984).

Another
significant book that discusses how UFO evidence is covered up by key government
and military institutions is Clifford Stone’s,
UFOs are Real (1997).
Stone examines key documents gained through FOIA requests that demonstrate the
existence of various classified programs and incidents that deal with the UFO
phenomenon, and the agencies and military departments involved. He persuasively
demonstrates that government agencies will lie to investigators over UFO
information.

One of
the most astonishing exopolitical developments was the leaking of a number of
documents known as
the Majestic Documents that were initially sent to
Jaime Shandera in 1984 and publicly announced in 1987 by William Moore.16 These
documents emerged from the efforts of UFO researchers such as Shandera,
Moore
and Tim Cooper to liaise with ‘insiders’ in order to get information for a
possible documentary.17 Dr Robert Wood achieved considerably success in
demonstrating that these documents are authentic and/or replicas of historic
documents.

Another researcher, Stanton Friedman, examined the leaked “Majestic
Documents” and proposed the existence of a “Cosmic Watergate” created to
maintain secrecy over evidence supporting the ETH. Friedman, through detailed
historical scholarship, provides compelling authentication for a number of
Majestic Documents.18

He concludes in favor of the authenticity of documents
describing the creation of the Majestic 12 Group for controlling evidence
related to extraterrestrial affairs; the “
Eisenhower Briefing Document”
describing the history of crashed extraterrestrial vehicles (ETVs) and captured
extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs); and the “
Special Operations
Manual” that outlines recovery procedures for ETVs and EBEs.

Collectively,
the Majestic Documents describe key actors, institutions and processes
associated with an extraterrestrial presence known to exist since at least
1947. The leaked Majestic Documents offer surprising evidence of a
comprehensive government cover up of UFOs and the ETH.

In conclusion, research
through FOIA and leaked government documents constituent an important stream of
exopolitical research into the government cover up of evidence supporting the
ETH.

Exopolitics:
Phase 3 (1992)

Political Activism and the UFO Cover Up

Operation
Right to Know (ORTK) was active from 1992-1995 in organizing demonstrations for
the right of the general public to learn the truth about UFOs and for full
public disclosure to occur. Sponsored by Ed Komarek and Mike Jamieson, ORTK
organized the first UFO protest in Washington D.C. in June 1992.19 ORTK
'shocked' the traditional UFO
community by
employing political activism rather
than the more traditional scientific study of the UFO phenomenon.

It organized
10 demonstrations in the U.S. and Britain before disbanding in 1995.

ORTK was a
significant expression of political activism aimed against the political
cover-up the UFO phenomenon.20 It has laid the foundation for subsequent efforts to
mobilize broad mass based action for ending the “Cosmic Watergate”.

At the
same time ORTK became active, another more clandestine effort was underway to
promote UFO disclosure. This was orchestrated by
Laurence Rockefeller in 1993
and comprised a confidential effort to have President Clinton briefed on UFO
issues so he could take the initiative for full public disclosure.
Rockefeller’s initiative involved contacting Clinton’s science advisor, Dr Jack
Gibbons, and sending him the most persuasive evidence for the reality of the
UFO phenomenon.

Rockefeller later organized an informal round table meeting of
a number of prominent UFO researchers including Dr. Scott Jones, Dr. John Mack,
Dr. Bruce Maccabee, Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Linda Moulton Howe, and
Dr. Steven Greer
who convened to share information with staffers from Dr Gibbon’s office.21 The
clandestine initiative began to collapse after Dr Gibbon became opposed to it
and warned President Clinton about cooperating with the Rockefeller initiative.

After a briefing by Laurence Rockefeller, allegedly to both President Clinton
and Hillary Clinton in August 1995, the initiative collapsed due to concerns
that pursuing a pro-disclosure policy would present insurmountable political
problems for President Clinton. The best available UFO evidence submitted to Dr
Gibbons and to President Clinton in the form of case studies was eventually
distributed to members of Congress and other legislative bodies, and finally
published as The Best Available Evidence.22

An
independent and complementary initiative for political disclosure began with Dr
Steven Greer. In contrast to the Rockefeller initiative and to the earlier
briefing report prepared by NICAP in 1961-64 that relied on the best case
sightings of UFO’s for initiating legislative investigations, Greer focused
instead on whistleblower testimonies. Greer had begun systematically
interviewing a number of ‘whistleblowers’ who claimed to have participated in
classified projects involving extraterrestrial technologies and/or
extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs).

Aside from cooperating with the
Rockefeller initiative to brief Dr Gibbons and President Clinton about UFOs,
Greer began a more public effort to brief senior Clinton officials such as CIA
Director James Woolsey, based on Greer’s ‘deep throat’ sources. Greer built an
impressive database of testimonies by whistleblowers who outlined how military
authorities and national security agencies were systematically covering up
evidence confirming both the reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH.

Greer’s
database eventually led to the beginning of
the Disclosure Project, with a
Press Conference in May 2001 featuring prominent officials from a range of
military, government and corporate entities who disclosing their knowledge of
UFOs & the extraterrestrial presence.23 Greer’s Disclosure Project
combined both witnesses and whistleblowers who had seen UFO’s and/or played a
role in the control of this information. This replicated the work of UFO
researchers such as Donald Keyhoe.

Greer’s Project also featured individuals
who claimed to have participated in classified projects such as UFO crash
retrievals and reverse engineering ETVs.

Greer’s
Disclosure Project was unique in political activism to end UFO secrecy. It highlighted
the role of whistleblowers who had participated in classified projects
involving reverse engineering of ETVs and EBEs. His focus on whistleblowers of
highly classified projects involving EBEs or ETVs, led to him being criticized
by many UFO researchers attacking the lack of documentation substantiating the
extraordinary claims made by such whistleblowers.

Nevertheless, the
credentials, integrity and consistency of many of these controversial
whistleblowers convinced many that there exists a highly classified world where
projects involving EBEs and ETVs were ongoing, and hidden from the public in a Cosmic Watergate.

Another
expression of political activism aimed against UFO secrecy was the candidature
of Stephen Bassett in the 2002 Congressional elections. Bassett ran for a House
seat in Maryland and attempted to raise the UFO secrecy issue into the
political mainstream. While Bassett was not the first to run on an explicit UFO
platform in Congressional elections or an electoral campaign, he was the first
candidate to make it onto the November ballot in Congressional elections after
openly promoting the UFO subject.

Bassett ran on the slogan of shifting UFO
debate “from lights in the sky” to “lies on the ground.” Bassett like many UFO
researchers/activists before him, was convinced by the extensive data of a
political cover up. He was destined to play an important role in the promotion
of Exopolitics as a distinct approach to UFO data.

In
conclusion, those engaging in various forms of political activism to end the
UFO cover up were implicitly promoting an exopolitical approach to the UFO and
ETH data.

While the term ‘exopolitics’ had not yet come into use, the above
individuals all implicitly understood the concept of exopolitics as a political
process associated with a cover up evidence concerning UFOs and the ETH.

Exopolitics
Phase 4

Exopolitics Emerges as a Distinct Approach to UFO Evidence

Exopolitics
as a distinct approach to UFO data grew out of all three phases described
above; political analysis and activity focused on processes covering up
evidence substantiating the reality of UFOs and the ETH. The term exopolitics
had not yet come into general usage. It was only in the years 2003-2004 that
the ‘exopolitics’ term began to enjoy widespread coverage as a result of the
literary and activist projects of three individuals: Alfred Webre, Stephen
Bassett and this author.

Those
explicitly supporting exopolitics as a distinct disciplinary approach to the ETH, contrast it to the empirical study of UFO sightings focusing on improved
investigative techniques and analysis of the best available evidence
substantiating the reality of the UFO phenomenon and the ETH. While UFO studies
has been dominated by physical scientists with an affinity for quantitative
analysis of empirical UFO data, exopolitical researchers tend to have social
science backgrounds where qualitative analysis of the UFO data and the ETH
occurs more often. It is therefore no surprise that those explicitly supporting
the ‘exopolitics’ term have social science backgrounds.

As
mentioned earlier, there are two ways of defining exopolitics as a distinct
approach to data on UFOs and the ETH. The first, more conventional approach,
concentrates on the political processes from the perspective of ‘Earth based’ or ‘geo-politics’. This
approach reflects what occurred in the first three phases of the historical
development of exopolitics as I discussed earlier.

I will refer to definitions
of exopolitics in terms of geo-political processes as the “conventional
exopolitics approach”. The second way of defining exopolitics involves
examination of political processes among extraterrestrial civilizations
themselves and how this relates to human affairs. I will henceforth refer to
this non-Earth based politics as the “non-conventional exopolitics
approach”.

This
author was the first to explicitly define exopolitics in terms of conventional
political processes associated with the ETH in global politics with a set of
online study papers beginning in January 2003. These culminated in the first
published book on Exopolitics,
Exopolitics: Political Implications of the
Extraterrestrial Presence (2004).

This book defines exopolitics as the,

“policy debate over the choices governments and populations need to make in
formulating and implementing legislative and policy responses to the presence
of ETs in human affairs.”24

In my book, I argue that extensive data concerning the ETH
should be ranked in terms of degrees of persuasiveness, and the strongest data
analyzed in terms of its exopolitical implications. The book further offers an
exopolitical analysis based on key political actors, institutions and processes
that explicitly deal with the ETH.

My book
offers an overview of different sources of evidence; the political institutions
and processes created to globally manage information on UFOs and the ETH; and
analysis of conventional international politics from the perspective of the
ETH.

My reliance on whistleblower and other evidentiary sources such as the
Majestic Documents led to much controversy with conventional UFO researchers
who widely dismiss the credibility of whistleblower testimonies concerning
classified projects involving ETVs and EBEs.

Furthermore, there continues to be
debate over the authenticity of the Majestic Documents and their use for
understanding how data on UFOs and the ETH is systematically removed or
discredited. My subsequent debates with many veteran UFO researchers
demonstrates that there is a clear dividing line between those, such as the
author, who believe that “Cosmic Watergate” involves systematic manipulation
and removal of documentation and evidence substantiating whistleblower
testimonies; and those demanding documentation and hard evidence to
substantiate whistleblower testimonies.25

This ongoing debate involves
different disciplinary approaches to the extensive data on UFOs and the ETH.

This
takes me to the second or “non-conventional” way of defining exopolitics. The
first person to coin and use the term ‘exopolitics’ was
Alfred Webre who in
2000 wrote an e-book or ‘online treatise’ that was 22,000 words in length and
could be freely downloaded from the internet. His e-book was titled
“Exopolitics: Towards a Decade of Contact.”26.

Webre had been employed in 1977 as a
futurist at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). His project to establish
communications protocols with extraterrestrials, sponsored by President
Carter’s White House, was abruptly cancelled by SRI due to Pentagon
pressure.

In his
online e-book, Webre defined Exopolitics as:

“the study of political process and governance in
interstellar society”.

His
definition of exopolitics was based on his research findings on the existence
of a ‘universe society’ of extraterrestrial races highly organized in a
universal federation. Their adopted policy of non-interference with regard to
humanity had placed Earth under a ‘quarantine’ due to humanity's propensity
for using destructive weapons in resolving geo-political problems. Webre’s
approach to exopolitics mirrored the information released by early ‘contactees’
such Adamski, Menger and Van Tassel describing the politics, law and economic
systems of visiting extraterrestrial races. Webre did not use these contacteé
reports in developing his analysis. Instead, he used a means of reasoning
described in his e-book as the “intuitive method of knowledge”:

A more appropriate approach to Universe society is the
intuitive method of knowledge. This intuitive approach to our Universe is not
what the contemporary human scientific establishment wants you to pursue. Since
time immemorial, our human culture has used intuition to survive. Our User’s
Guide uses the inductive, intuitive method to build a working model of what the
Universe is really like.

In his
recently published book on Exopolitics (2005), Webre elaborates further on his
“intuitive method” of psychic information gained through methods such as
“scientific remote viewing” and ‘channelled’ information such as
the Urantia
Book.

Webre
has been a major source of (exo)political activism to prevent the weaponization
of space.27 Webre’s exopolitics approach continues to remain
controversial due to the lack of strong evidentiary support for his main thesis
of a flourishing interstellar society with organized political processes, and
for the novelty of his “intuitive method of knowledge”.

Nevertheless, his
thesis promises to be very significant in the future as the ETH is more widely
accepted; and the political processes used by extraterrestrial civilizations
receive greater scrutiny. Greater use of “intuitive methods” of information
gathering and communication, the extraterrestrial approach, will also be more
utilized in future.

Another
pioneer explicitly supporting the exopolitics term is Stephen Bassett who
organized a series of “Exopolitics Expos” in the Washington DC metropolitan
area in April 2004 and 2005. Bassett’s Exopolitics Expos were the first UFO
conferences that were explicitly focused on the exopolitical implications of
the UFO cover-up and the ETH.

Basset
emphasized at the conference his earlier
Congressional campaign slogan:

“it is not about lights in the sky, it is about
lies on the ground."

Bassett assembled a line up of distinguished speakers
from UFO research as well as pioneers in exopolitics research providing a
unique opportunity for the general public to witness the emergence of
exopolitics as a distinct approach to the UFO phenomenon and the ETH.

In addition
to Webre, Bassett and the author who gave the ‘exopolitics’ term its initial
impetus, there are a growing number of UFO researchers, organizers and
activists supporting exopolitics research. These include veteran UFO researcher Paola Harris who investigated and supported the credibility of key
whistleblowers such as Col Philip Corso, Sgt Clifford Stone and
Michael Wolf.
Harris has explicitly come out in support of the exopolitics term.28
Similarly, Ed Komarek, one of the original sponsors of Operation Right to Know,
explicitly supports the exopolitics term with a series of articles on his
exopolitics blogsite.29

There have also been more conferences explicitly promoting exopolitics. These include Dr Roberto Pinotti, a long time Italian UFO
researcher, who is the organizer of the First Annual Symposium on Exobiology
and Exopolitics at the University of Calabria, Italy in October, 2005. And also
the Exopolitics Toronto Symposium organized by Victor Viggiani and
Mike Bird on
September 25, 2005, that featured a former Minister of Defense for Canada, Paul Hellyer.
30

Hellyer confirmed the
authenticity of Col Corso’s testimony
on UFOs and the ETH, and referred to government management of this information
as the “most successful cover up in the history of the world.”31 The
author with the assistance of other exopolitics pioneers has launched an Exopolitics Institute for political study and activism in extraterrestrial
affairs.32 Finally, this article itself is published in the
inaugural edition of the Exopolitics Journal.

Exopolitics
is a term that will continue to gather support as the cover up of evidence
substantiating the ETH becomes more difficult to maintain with a global
population becoming ever more informed. As exopolitics evolves there will be
three main challenges. First will be the debate over how to best to define
exopolitics.

One approach will be the author’s definition in terms of
‘conventional’ or ‘geo’-political processes concerning UFOs and the ETH.

The
second approach will be Webre’s definition which focuses on political processes
associated with non-Earth based civilizations.

A
second challenge will be to understand how the ‘conventional’ exopolitics
approach has been implicit in the pioneering UFO research of seminal UFO
investigators such as Donald Keyhoe. This will be important as many
contemporary UFO researchers attempt to marginalize exopolitics as ‘fringe UFO
research’ with no historical roots.

The
third challenge will be in evaluating and ranking the diverse range of sources
used in exopolitics research, often based on social science criteria, rather
than more limited sources used in UFO research substantiated by physical
science criteria.

I sincerely hope that my effort to outline the historical
roots of exopolitical thought will demonstrate the rich history of this newly
identified science of exopolitics.

Endnotes

1Stephen Basset organized the 2004 and 2005
Exopolitics Annual Expos in the Washington DC area; and an Exopolitics
Symposium was organized at the University of Toronto on Sept 25, 2005. The two
books are Michael Salla, Exopolitics: Political Implications of the
Extraterrestrial Presence (2004); and Alfred Webre, Exopolitics:
Government, Politics and Law in the Universe (2005). The “Exopolitics
Institute” was launched on July 4, 2005 (www.exopoliticsinstitute.org).